Hello Mr. Wolf, won't you please sit down?

[gtill]

Get a Govt Job!

[JWFITZ]

LOL,

If we keep on this path it will be the only kind left. . .

[Guest]

Just try to remember that oil and coal are basically carbon and hydrogen that was sequestered by plants and zooplankton millions of years ago when then earth was a veritable hot house teaming with flora and fauna.

My garden wants that co2 back.
So Jay, I'll take all the co2 you want to get rid of.

[JWFITZ]

Sure, you bet. Plants are starved for CO2, that's why levels in the atmosphere are increasing nearly a half percent a year--because there's a shortage. . .

Last time we had levels of CO2 of 400ppm+ the earth was indeed was teeming with flora and fauna. At least near the poles. Much of the earth was a dead zone and the oceans nearly sterile. Even in spite of the fact that the sun was significantly cooler. . .

[Guest]

Actually the amount of co2 pumped into the environment my man pales compared to the giga tons released by the oceans when we have a SOLAR induced warming period which we have had in the last 200 years.

Since we are heading into a solar minimum the oceans temps will cool (there is a great lag effect)

Also water vapor is a much more powerful greenhouse gas.

But at the end of the day we will never get our woolly mammoths and mastodons back, our Neanderthal ancestor's and their phat rollin' SUVs saw to that.

I'll make you a $100 wager that the earth's temps will be lower in 20 years than they are now.

Calculated for inflation $100.00 will be something like 35 cents.

[JWFITZ]

I think you need to do a bit more research on the topic. A practical way to start would to build a greenhouse, plant it with tomatoes or some such, and burn coal in a pit in the middle of it. . .and see how well things flourish.

[Guest]

Burning a small piece of coal or an oil lamp in your greenhouse would benefit the plants.

It is a matter of scale and concentration.
to much of anything is a bad thing. when you compare how much coal and oil we burn to the vast size of our ecosystem it is nothing.

But I really respect people who don't like oil or it's derivatives that boycott all things that were produced or transported with it.

I mean it just aint cool to show up to the earth day festival in an car.

Remember what they said when Saddam Hussein blew all the oil wells. Environmentalist were saying it would be the end of the world. Remember all the hubbub over the Exxon Valdez spill? Well nature has a way of remediating oil.

Every day million and millions of barrels of oil naturally seep into the oceans. The bacteria just gobble it up and are hungry for more.

Being a carbon based life form, I am a great proponent of carbon.

However I am against locally concentrated poisons, be it chicken manure or pcb rich run off.

There is a balance

[JWFITZ]

I'd say I agree with most of that, actually. There's a detail or two missing, however, that makes all the difference.

While it's sensible to say we're burning biofuel when we burn coal, that's true. The issue is that we're burning millions of years worth of carbon pumpdown a year.

[Guest]

I have been to places like Mexico City and Manila when the fumes are so thick that you have to blow the crap out of your nose several times a day.
That can't be healthy. But the old earth can handle it. it rains and scrubs the air and all those toxins get exposed to fungi and bacteria and voila clean again. The earth reclaims.

I have seen places in Mexico where the over use of High nitrogen fertilizer has caused actual canyons to form because of erosion. These are the things that I hate to see.

I am checking out of this silly world and like you, I am going to exist within a permaculture loop.

I don't have a problem with using any resource, I just can stand wasting anything.

I had an epiphany one day while I was checking out at Home Depot.
I was buying Round up and Fertilizer simultainiously.

It occurred to me that I was buying a plant killer and a plant grower at the same time. Insane.

[JWFITZ]

Fair enough. We're quibbling about timescale and human impact.